1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an apparatus and method for providing a Multicast and Broadcast Service (MBS) to a mobile terminal in a Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) system, and in particular, to an apparatus and method for supporting an interactive broadcasting service by receiving information from a plurality of mobile terminals during the broadcasting.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, communication systems have been developed based on a voice service and are now advancing to providing data service and various multimedia services as well as the voice service. The voice oriented communication systems have not satisfied users' service needs because of their relatively narrow transmission bandwidths and expensive fees. Additionally, advances of the communication industry and users' increasing demand for Internet service raise the necessity for communication systems that efficiently provide Internet service. To respond to this demand, a Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) system is presented with enough broadband to meet the users' increasing demand for an efficiently provided Internet service.
The BWA system integrally supports not only a voice service, but also multimedia application services such as various low- and high-speed data services and high-definition video. The BWA system is a radio communication system capable of accessing a Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), a Public Switched Data Network (PSDN), the Internet, an International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT)-2000 network, and an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) network in a mobile or stationary environment based on radio media using broadbands of 2 GHz, 5 GHz, 26 GHz, and 60 GHz, and supporting a data transfer rate over 2 Megabits per second (Mbps). The BWA system can be classified to a broadband wireless subscriber network, a broadband mobile access network, and a high-speed wireless Local Area Network (LAN) based on the terminal mobility (stationary or mobile), the communication environment (indoor or outdoor), and the channel transfer rate.
The radio access scheme of the BWA system is standardized by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.16 Working Group, which is an international standardization organization.
Compared to a conventional radio technique for the voice service, the IEEE 802.16 standard can transfer much data within a shorter time with the wide data bandwidth and allow all users to efficiently share and utilize the channel (or resource). Also, with Quality of Service (QoS) guaranteed, the users can enjoy services of different qualities according to the service characteristics.
An IEEE 802.16 system has a Multicast and Broadcast Service (MBS) service specification for providing the multicast and the broadcast to a plurality of mobile terminals. The MBS specification can distinguish the same multicast and broadcast service area using different Connection IDentifiers (CIDs) or different Security Associations (SAs). In other words, by means of the CID and the SA, the MBS specification can specify that an MBS zone (MBS_ZONE) is a region where broadcast and multicast service flows are effective. A Base Station (BS) broadcasts MBS_ZONE information using a Downlink Channel Descriptor (DCD) message. Namely, the MBS_ZONE is a BS group using the same CID and SA to transmit contents.
In the mean time, while viewers receive the broadcasting services in the simplex manner in the related art, an interactive service enables to delivery the viewers' opinion or demand to broadcast contents or a content provider and to reflect the gathered viewers' opinion or demand in the broadcast contents. Since the MBS service enables not only the unidirectional downlink broadcasting service but also the bidirectional uplink connection at the same time according to the characteristics of the IEEE 802.16 system, the interactive service can be provided.
As discussed above, to support the MBS, a method needs to be defined to provide the interactive service to the plurality of mobile terminals.